Author's Note: This is a backstory for an RP I'm in for Mega Man. If you couldn't tell, I'm Bubble Man. :) Enjoy!
If Bubble Man accessed his earliest memory, it would have been of when he was activated. Dr. Wily had activated him while he was still building him, which Bubble found odd. Why not wait until he was complete? Well, he was mostly complete, so maybe the doctor was just lonely? It was weird, sitting up, watching Wily attach flippers to his ankle joints. Bubble would watch intently when Wily would sing to himself, or talk to himself in general. When Wily would notice he was being watched, he'd immediately stop and berate Bubble for staring.
"It's not polite," he would say while wagging a finger. He'd then smile and ask how he was doing, if his voice modulator felt like it was working properly, or if any of his joints felt stiff.
Bubble was content with this. For several hours a day Dr. Wily would work on him, slowly and painstakingly checking him over, making sure there weren't any defects. After his body was complete, Wily moved onto his face. That was mildly uncomfortable, but Wily insisted on this. He wanted his 'children' to look like people, not just any other robot, so hair was a must, as was the synthetic skin and eyes.
When he finally got a look at himself in a mirror, Bubble was surprised by how human he looked. If he shed his armor and wore human clothing, he could quite possibly blend right in. Well, maybe except for his turquoise hair. He played with his hair, watching himself in the mirror. He pulled at his eyelids, looking at how real the eyes looked. They were even moist like a human's eye! His mouth looked like a human's mouth, too. He had a row of individual teeth, a tongue, and what looked like tonsils.
He was shocked at the amount of detail Wily had put into his face. Especially when he would be wearing a helmet and be underwater most of the time. Which presented his first issue. He couldn't walk. He could only hop and no matter what the doctor did, it couldn't be fixed. Something with the fins, he would say. This did nothing good for his robotic self esteem. This may have been where his habit of running his hand through his hair came up from.
When he was finally in his new home, his tank, he felt more at ease. The gentleness of the water and the sound it would make in his ears instantly eased his core. It appeared that Wily put the same amount of care into the scenery of the tank as he did with Bubble Man himself. There were mini coral reefs, dozens of species of fish, and even an underwater tunnel that led out to the ocean. He would swim through the tunnel often, looking out into the open blue, always wondering what was out there.
It was on one of these little trips that he came upon a shark pup, it had squeezed its way between the tunnel's bars somehow and now couldn't get out. Bubble cautiously approached it, not wanting to spook it further. But this was a shark he was dealing with, so of course it lashed out and bit him. The shark shrank away after biting into hard steel, but then came back around and kept bumping Bubble, as if curious. Bubble smiled to himself and reached out again, this time able to pet the creature.
It would follow Bubble around, wherever he would swim. He wondered if sharks could imprint something as its mother (or father) like other animals could. No matter, Bubble took care of him, feeding him, naming him (Bruce, because hey, who doesn't enjoy a JAWS reference?). Having a pet put his uneasiness and loneliness to the wayside, which did wonders for him.
Every now and then Bubble would come up from the water, just to sit in the sun and kick his feet in the water. Bruce would follow and stick his head out of the water, trying to catch Bubble's foot in his mouth and drag him back underwater. That was a game Bubble was not fond of.
When his brothers would come around, Bubble would be nervous, constantly running his hands through his hair, terrified of when they would ask him out of the water and they'd find out his defect. Despite his efforts, they did drag him out of the water, forced him to an outfit, and demanded that they all go 'Trick or Treating.' If Bubble were human, he'd be crying the moment he started to hop. They all laughed and said he was perfect for the costume.
"What?" Bubble was deadpan.
"The perfect Jiang Shi," he heard Wily comment. A quick run through his files revealed that a Jiang Shi is a Chinese vampire who hopped instead of walked. He immediately calmed down and actually enjoyed the time out of the water.
After this, Bubble asked Wily for normal legs and feet. He wanted to be above water, with his brothers more. He was getting lonely again, not that Bruce wasn't good company, he just realized how much he enjoyed his brothers' companionship, even if most of the time they were fighting.
Then the day came when he had to fight Mega Man and Bubble... He doesn't like remembering that if he can help it. It was painful, this child, this image of innocence, coming to kill him. And for what? Because their fathers didn't like each other? He hoped, and still hopes, that Mega Man didn't actually want to fight him, that he was just following orders like he was.
When he was defeated, he sank to the bottom of the tank. He was in pieces, but his core remained in tact. He had no idea where Bruce was, and this troubled him. He laughed to himself that he was more concerned for the fish than his own well being. After a few days, Bubble had to shut himself off to conserve energy. He could only hope that someone would come to retrieve him...
The next time that Bubble Man awoke, he was in Dr. Wily's lab with most of him rebuilt. It was like flashing back to his activation. Wily was singing to himself while he was working on Bubble's legs and the water bot couldn't have been happier.